Swedish Match posts rise in Q2 pretax profit
STOCKHOLM, July 17 – Tobacco products maker Swedish Match AB (SWMA.ST) posted a rise in second-quarter earnings on Friday and said it expected higher sales and operating profit in the second half of the year versus 2008 levels.
Pretax profit rose to 791 million Swedish crowns ($101 million) from a year-ago 574 million, adjusted for the divestment of a South African pipe tobacco and snuff operation.
The mean forecast for pretax profit in a Reuters poll, which included that business, was for a 705 million profit.
The company said the businesses it sold made a net profit of 41 million crowns in the period. It did not give a pretax figure.
The firm sells tobacco products such as cigars, lighters and wet snuff — a tobacco product sold mainly in the United States and Scandinavia, but banned elsewhere in the European Union.
The operating margin for its key product wet snuff — which accounted for around 58 percent of total operating profit last year — dipped to 42.6 percent from a year-ago 43.6 percent, lagging an expected 42.8 percent in the Reuters poll.
The cigar division’s operating margin rose to 24.9 percent from 20.2 percent in the same period the previous year and versus a mean forecast of 18.9 percent.
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